


Playthings

by jettiebettie



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Dehumanization, Kidnapping, M/M, Medical Trauma, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Others to be added - Freeform, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-02 14:33:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4063546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jettiebettie/pseuds/jettiebettie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he had a dollar for every one of those brats that up and died on him, he’d have thirty-seven bucks. Oh, but no. He’s not actually making money on this project; rather it feels like he’s sinking millions of dollars into giving these asshole doctors free reign to mutilate Pandoran kids. He doesn’t care what they do on their own time, but on the clock he’d like to see a little more progress being made and a few less bodies wasted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oldmanrenkas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldmanrenkas/gifts).
  * Inspired by [[Fanart] Playthings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4073389) by [renqa (oldmanrenkas)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldmanrenkas/pseuds/renqa). 



> AU based off of comic piece(s) by Renqa (link at the end). Rhys is a Pandoran teenager kidnapped for Hyperion experimentation for its new cybernetics program.

If he had a dollar for every one of those brats that up and died on him, he’d have thirty-seven bucks. Oh, but no. He’s not actually making money on this project; rather it feels like he’s sinking millions of dollars into giving these asshole doctors free reign to mutilate Pandoran kids. He doesn’t care what they do on their own time, but on the clock he’d like to see a little more progress being made and a few less bodies wasted.

Test subjects were a bitch find, what with settlements to invade and the occasional parent to kill.

As it stands, not a single one has survived all procedures. There have been a few hopefuls- those that managed not to bleed out during the limb amputation and toughed it out through the  _nerve integration_ process, but not a one has been able to fight off the added shock of the eye removal and neural wiring. Jack scoffs at the reports in front of him. You’d think these kids would be more hardy considering the hellhole he pulled them from. Ah, this one didn’t even make it past the bone sawing. Thirty-eight bucks.

“Oh, come on!”

Angrily, he flings the papers away from his desk, pushing his chair back and stomping towards his office door. Perhaps it was time to put the fear of god into those vacuous wastes of space he called employees.

-

The medical section of the R&D labs always carried a sharp, sterilized scent that made him want to sneeze. And just because he ran the place didn’t mean he could just waltz right on through. Well, yeah actually it did, but he was well aware of the number of sensitive experiments being done at the same time. He forces himself to go through the sterilization procedures, even washes his hands up to his elbows because when was the last time he really did a thorough cleaning? Before or after the meeting with Anderson? He wrinkles his nose when he can still see blood under his nails but carries on. The break in his determine momentum quells his agitation only slightly, but it’s enough that he notices the an urgency in the air amongst the scientists and doctors. It actually take a moment for anyone to realize he’s there, but finally someone glances over to where he’s standing, arms crossed. The guy freezes, causing another lab assistant to run into him from behind.

“Christ, Jerry, what the f-” The guy, Jerry, slaps a hand over his coworker’s mouth but otherwise doesn’t move.

“Gentlemen,” Jack says through his teeth. The rest of the lab comes to an abrupt halt, turning to look at him. Without the ambient noise of people supposedly doing their jobs, Jack swears he can hear something beyond the glass, down in the operations auditorium. He glances at the viewing window but doesn’t move. “Would you be so kind as to grab Hill? Because if she’s not in front of me in the next thirty seconds,  _someone’s losing their head!_ ” Everyone, not just the two idiots standing there, immediately fall to action, sending out pages, requesting Dr. Hill’s presence in the observation room over speakers, and just plain ol’ running to get out of the same room as him.

And there it is again, that sound.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Jack walks over to the window and his eyes widen. There, on the floor weeping and screaming with the standard white gown practically hanging off of him, is the fruit of all this headache inducing labor.

“All cybernetic implants were successful, sir,” Dr. Hill’s voice says behind him. There’s an annoying amount of self-satisfaction in her voice that Jack chooses to ignore for the moment. “Subject might be slightly unstable, but other than that everything seems normal.”

Unstable. Sure, that’s one way to put it. The kid is sucking in breath like he’s suffocating, tears running rivers down his face and saliva flowing freely past his chin. Jack watches him shake and gasp and cry, but remain upright, conscious, and most certainly in pain. He can’t take his eyes off of the edge where reddened flesh meets Hyperion metal, or the blood soaked bandages covering the kid’s eye. Thirty-eight failures all seemed to culminate to this, a boy fighting through the shock of his body being torn apart, outside and in, reforged and repurposed for whatever Jack willed.

He’d be lying if he said it wasn’t a fucking  _gorgeous_  sight.

“If you can confirm, we are ready to dispose of the test material and move on to-”

“Nah, keep him,” Jack interrupts.

“Sir?” Hill asks.

“You heard me the first time. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

As if able to hear through the thick reinforced glass, the boy manages a shuttering breath and looks up in their general direction, the drool he seems incapable from stopping running down his throat and collarbone and into his hospital gown.

“But, sir,” Hill continues hesitantly. “All Pandoran adolescent test subjects are required to be discarded. This one especially might not make it through the examination procedure, and-”

“Yeah, yeah, super secret Hyperion proto-tech is jammed inside him,” Jack says flippantly, waving his hand.

“B-but, Jack. The rules are-”

“I know the rules, honey,” his voice is cold and unyielding. “Let’s just make one exception this time.” The silence behind him is decidedly unconvinced but unwilling to counter. “You have a near finished product here. Why the hell would you waste it?”

“… The first initial success is doubtful to be perfect. We’re still refining the process. The surgeries thus far are too demanding on the human body, any more added stress would mostly likely kill him.”

“Well, then there’s not a problem.” Jack turns around to face her. “Either he dies and you don’t have to waste a bullet, or he survives and you get more of your precious data.” He speaks slowly, as if addressing a child. Dr. Hill’s jaw clenches and she chances a glance out the window. “Can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, I get that. But if you manage to keep him alive through the rest of this, sweetheart, I can pretty much guarantee the Head Researcher position for this department becoming available. Capiche?”

Any reluctance Hill had disappears from her face all at once. Jack smirks and turns back to the observation window. The boy stares back at him almost vacantly, but his remaining hand is clenched tight, his whole body still shaking be it from pain or anger or just reflex. What’s the point, Jack thinks, of having employees with advanced cybernetic enhancements if they haven’t actually suffered for them? One-in-thirty-nine is starting to sound pretty good to him, a way to find the survivors, the worthy ones.

And if he could keep to himself the very first, the most resilient of them all, well, that’s just a bonus.

* * *

 

[First part of AU comic](http://theteenagehorror.com/post/120447359843/trigger-warning-for-amputation-abuse-slight) by [Renqa](http://theteenagehorror.com/).


	2. Chapter 2

It hurt so much.

It hurt from the moment they shoved him into a cell to the moment the saw started cutting into flesh and then into bone. And it just kept going, time slowing down and preserving every muscle severing second. It's hard to say what was louder, the whirling of sharp metal or his screaming. But the doctors never once flinched from the sounds, making him wonder if they were even real or just all in his head. But they had to be real, they had to have happened because what feels like hours later he's lying on a table covered in his blood. He loses time for a bit then, overwhelmed by the pain and the sudden, unnatural imbalance of his body.

Apparently he died for a minute. 

The very second he coughs back to life, he remembers wishing he hadn't. His shoulder was on fire, but his body was covered in sweat, convulsing more than shaking. The smell of burning flesh told him it wasn't just a feeling, that they weren't going to bother waiting for it to heal. That cauterization was almost a godsend, his nerves being rendered numb and useless and very, very cold. With violent tremors wracking his body, he stared blankly up at the blinding light above him, drenched in blood and sweat and hoping it was over.

And it was over, for a few hours. Hours of IVs and blood bags to replace what he'd lost, of people muttering things around him that he could never quite make out. Hours of trying to get his body to move, to jump off of the table and make a break for it, and yet not a single muscle responding. Hours of wishing he had tried to escape with the older ones, because at least they had only been shot in the head.

He started to cry when the doctors surrounded him again. Pathetic, infantile sobs begging and pleading for them not to do whatever it was that they were about to do. Must have been in his head again, because no one responded or even acknowledged him. He was turned on his side and held down by hands and leather straps and he remembers seeing his rapid breath fog the metal table. He tried to focus on it rather than the prodding around charred flesh and the sharp, stinging feeling of pieces being sliced away. And then there was the drilling, all around the rounding of his shoulder, into the bone in some pattern. He tasted blood then, just assuming it was his own before he realized he'd bitten someone. Something hooked at the side of his mouth, trying to wrench his jaw open. His mouth only opened again when they began to anchor something heavy to his shoulder, rods being shoved into new holes and forced to attach. He had to have been screaming, despite the doctors' lack of response, because his throat was raw and torn by the time they'd finished.

They gave him another few hours after that, to cry and weakly call for friends he knew were dead. He rocked several times, trying to get away from the new, unfamiliar weight at his shoulder, but it followed him every time and he cried harder until he lost consciousness. 

When he woke up, it was in a panic. He was strapped down on his back again, his head held in place, metal framework around his whole skull making it impossible to move. Above him in that harsh light was the black outline of something long and sharp. One of the doctor's heads blocked the light as she stared at him directly in the eyes, the first time any of them had done so since he had been dragged into the operations room. 

"Which one, do you think?" she had asked, but she hadn't been asking him. 

"You're right handed. Take out the left; it'll be less cumbersome," someone at his feet said.

"Twenty says we don't get beyond removal."

"Fifty on the neural port. The removal is simple. It's when you start digging into the brain that test subjects really start to fall apart." 

"Shut up, both of you," the doctor above him said. Her frustration only caused him to panic harder, but he was ignored again. Suddenly hands were on his face, with something put in place to hold his eye open. "The left then." She held something up, a thin metal instrument with a sharp bowl at the end.  

He was crying when she took his eye, tears causing her hand to slip occasionally and becoming blood soon after. 

No more, he had thought. It hurt so much, how could they possibly hurt him more? 

But the drill at his temple was his answer.

-

It still hurts. 

He's swimming in blackness, body heavy and head pounding and still in so much pain. He doesn't want to wake up. He wants to be back on Pandora, where the worst he's ever suffered was near starvation and a severe beating or two. He wants to be lying on a lumpy, threadbare mattress and dreaming of a better life. He wants the hell he knows, not the hell he's in. He just wants it to stop hurting. 

He tries to open his eyes, but only one can. The other is held shut by gauze and bandages. When he tries to use his arms to push himself up, only one can. The other is gone, replaced by cold, dead weight that threatens to drag him back down. Slowly he brings his hand up to touch his shoulder, his heart seizing in his chest when his fingers press into unyielding metal instead of skin. His breathing becomes erratic as his pulse stutters and picks up. He topples over the side, his knees hitting the floor so hard that a dull pain registers. But what is that compared to everything else? To ache in his bones or the throbbing in his head? 

He's tries to breathe more steadily, but the harder he tries the harder it gets. Nothing feels right, his whole body feels wrong. He's crying, but even that hurts and makes him cry more. His wheezing gasps turn sloppy, saliva building up and overflowing. This isn't happening, this can't be happening. None of this is real, none of this is-

He looks up then, through one of the glass windows surrounding the room and sees a man watching him intently. It's only the second time someone here has looked at him like that, and causes him to freeze. No, he thinks. He clenches his left hand and rocks. No more. No more, no more, no more. He thinks he's about to lose control of his breathing again when the man enters the room and kneels in front of him. A hand slides through his hair and roughly pulls his face up to look at the man in his mismatched eyes.

It's probably the gentlest touch he's felt since being here.

"What do we have here? A survivor? Aren't you a tough one." 

That doesn't make sense. He doesn't feel like a survivor, he doesn't feel tough. He feels like something used and broken and tossed aside. 

"You got a name, pumpkin?" The man's words are tinged with a cruel kindness, fake yet calming all the same. He tries to find his voice.

"R-Rhys," he says, almost uncertainly. But the man smiles then, and even though it sends a shiver of fear up his spine, it's still an expression Rhys hasn't seen on anyone in weeks.

"Well, welcome to Hyperion, kiddo."

-

[Second part of AU comic](http://theteenagehorror.com/post/120850564458/trigger-warning-for-amputation-abuse-blood-and) by [Renqa](http://theteenagehorror.com/).

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters will be updated as pages are added to the AU.  
> (Did you know you can find me on tumblr at jettiebettie.tumblr.com? It's true.)


End file.
